David Hume and Modern Economics

David Hume and Modern Economics

Hume’s contribution to modern economics is normally thought of in terms of his early statement of the quantity theory of money, and to a lesser extent his views on trade and development. At a methodological level the influence from his empiricism is commonly traced to the development of econometrics. But if we explore his philosophy more fully, we find a much richer set of ideas which can illum...

David Hume on Banking and Hoarding

David Hume and Erasmus Darwin's Zoonomia.

A Credit Market à la David Hume

The answer, according to Hume, could be the borrower’s “abhorrence of villainy and knavery”, but this could only be the case in “a civiliz’d state, when [the borrower] is train’d up according to a certain discipline and education”. This cannot be the answer, however, when the interaction is looked at from the perspective of man’s basic “rude and more natural condition”. Nor can the answer be fo...

David Rittenhouse: Modern Mathematician

O n the surface it seems implausible that a colonial scientist could be characterized as a mathematician by today’s standards. Yet the single aim of this note is to provide evidence that two of David Rittenhouse’s papers from 220 years ago qualify him as a modern analyst. Rittenhouse (1732–1796) had no formal education and never earned a degree. Except for a brief appointment as professor of as...